MILITARY: It's not always best answer

I just read something in Businessweek that aggravated me. “The U.S. buys weapons and military supplies from defense contractors around the world — ships from Australia, airplanes from Italy, combat vehicles from Britain — with little objection from Congress.” All this is happening while millions of Americans are being paid unemployment.

That is not the worst of it. The U.S. is buying helicopters from Russia and giving them to the Afghan Air Force. Congress isn’t upset with the Russia deal or any of the other senseless purchases overseas because they take from Americans in a time of need, but they have singled out the Russian deal for criticism because the company that makes the helicopters also sends other military equipment to the Syrian government. I am not a fan of the Syrian government but it seems to me that a better reason for criticism would be to try to stop the overseas purchases.

The rationale for giving Afghans helicopters is so they can be equipped and we can get out of there sooner. My answer is to let the Afghans buy their own helicopters. We don’t need to spend any more money to get out of Afghanistan. We can get out now. We went after Bin Laden with 100,000 plus men and couldn’t get him. It took a few men on Seal Team Six to do the job. We need to do more surgical strikes instead of throwing our mighty Army at every squabble around the world. We also need to let other countries rid themselves of crappy governments. Why should it be my concern that the Taliban is governing Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein is governing Iraq? I don’t like the governments in North Korea or Iran either, but I don’t see the point in sending U.S. troops in to remove their leader.

People have been able to remove leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and Syrians are currently attempting to remove their leader. Should these be fights for the U.S. military? I think not. I support the military, but I don’t support its current use and I don’t support the amount of money they spend.

This country needs to stop its love affair with the military and start a rational reduction in force. The military needs to be just strong enough to protect us from attack and not so strong that we think we can save the rest of the world from tyrants.

BRUCE HANSEN

Coeur d’Alene